What am I waiting for?

I'm having a bit of an artist's block. A bit of writer's block. A bit of an existential moment. Not 'crisis,' because it's not that critical. But a moment, to be sure.

What am I waiting for? To create something that is really mine. Here. Now. No one else is going to do it for me. I watched NINE the other night, with Daniel Day Lewis and all those gals...all those big stars...you'd call them "Bijin" here -- beautiful women. I appreciated the movie -- the dance numbers, the costumes, the aerial shots in Italy and the flashback sequences in black and white where the childhood of this boy played out like any 1940's photo that can now be found in the college bookstores, beckoning the freshman who are eager to put something meaningful and artsy on their walls. My favorite character was Judi Dench, Bruno's costume designer, because everything she does and says is so true. But also because I like the way it gave the costume designer their due. I thought of Marlene Stewart, Shawn's costume designer on the two movies I was on set for. Marlene Stewart who created Madonna in the 1980's and who, like Cynthia Karalla -- is synonymous in my mind with the word 'artist.' For their vision and what they produce. They create worlds.

But I digress. Daniel Day Lewis's character is living his life like a movie -- instead of making his movie. It only struck me today, while I was running laps around a dirt track in the park, with views of the buildings in Tokyo, shuffling through my ipod shuffle, waiting for just the right song to match the landscape that is here, that is now...that I realized a small comparison with the plight of that fictional director character -- and myself. I have never directed a feature. And yet it is all I think about when my heart starts pumping and music flips the switch on my imagination. I fantasize about a homemade dolly. I turn a street and assess the grade, knowing that the cobble will surely make a bicycle dolly or even a hand cart insufficient. I am constantly picturing these opening credits. I admire title sequences and think of my own. That as of yet unincorporated production company I will call Dodge Art Productions. We will start at the moment a dart is thrown though black space, riding with it towards some unseen destination. The sound of the wind catching the feathers in the dart. And then, it will connect with a point of white, at which time the sound effect of a trunk slamming will reverberate as the camera pulls back and the words, in 1970's Dodge font, will come into focus. A shadow cast from the point that the dart hit, the bottom of the A, casting a shadow that looks like a D...

I am immediately afraid of failure. There, I said it. Afraid to focus on just that one thing because there are so many other things I must be focusing on. But if not now, when? Here, as I am, with this artist in residence existence. Don't I know enough about this place and my take on it?

At present, I am searching through clips on the internet. Here in this technological jungle I surf at random, coming upon an old Joan Crawford movie called "Humoresque." Black and White, shoulder padded Joan, with so much diva in every frame that you can almost hear her shouting "NO WIRE HANGERS!!!" to her cowering daughter Christina who wrote the tell all MOMMIE DEAREST. I read it at some point in my adolescence (after Clan of the Cave Bear and before Garden of Shadows) -- and I loved it. I loved the excess, the drama, the tyranny and the betrayals. It was like DALLAS. Except it was based on a woman who once lived in Hollywood and who was called, and still is called, a 'movie star.'

After my run I went shopping today. I wanted to find a pair of black shoes I could wear other than my patent heels (thank you JJ/Suzanne Todd). Imagine my surprise when I discovered, after traipsing through floors of stores, a second hand mall. That was put together like Anthropologie meets Urban Outfitters meets my favorite thrift store. No moth ball smell, no drooling lady in the corner. Shabby chic floors with paint chipping and change rooms that were once shower stalls, replete with cream tile and a silver drain plus posters of wild looking Tokyo pop stars in rad outfits. I found a black pair of suede boots in my size (this was a miracle: every pair of shoes I tried on in the mall was too small). I also found way too many deals and treasures. Corduroy dresses and ruched turtlenecks, a black leather satchel, a wool vest that looks like it belongs on Goldie Hawn in 1969 and even said, on the label, "Collegetown" -- no dout an import from long ago that somehow found its way to this store and into my hands for the equivalent of $5. I also bought a dress that looks like it came from Austria. Baby doll style, black, with cream stitching on the neck and at the hem. And another dress -- MAD MEN esque, royal blue and black, zip up the back, above the knee. So many women in Tokyo are wearing wool tights and skirts and dresses and boots -- and so shall I. What will I do with all this winter wear back in LA? I will have to keep finding cold places to go.

This is all so far from the world I have been reading about, slowly, in my grandfather Harvey's memoirs. The Taufen farm in Washington state (Uniontown) with an orchard and livestock, acres and acres of wheat (500 give or take), and all his memories that sound to me like an episode of Little House on the Prairie. All the townsmen helping each other when it came time to skin a hog (if anyone wants to know how it's done, or what to avoid, I can advise). Or the one room schoolhouse (called the Taufen school) where children from all ages -- whoever was sent to school -- shared and shivered in until they replaced the potbellied stove with a coal stove. The coming of electricity in 1935 as part of The New Deal...here is a great quote:

"I think it was in the winter of 1925 that I first heard a radio. Henry and Sonora Conner invited our family to hear it one winter evening. We went by sleigh. There was no loud speaker, just a single set of earphones on what must have been a crystal set. I clearly remember the awe with which I heard music when I was given the earphones for a few seconds. Little did I dream of the curse of the television!"

Little did I dream of the curse of the television, my grandfather writes...

I want to skip ahead to World War II, Japan, Wilmington in the '40's and petrochemicals...but then I'd skip over meeting Helen, and the birth of Lester -- my father.